4 ms·

Have you tried living near a Caltrain station? I have, and IMHO the noise from the trains (they blow their horns when entering the station) is very annoying, an

by tsycho 10y ago

Have you tried living near a Caltrain station? I have, and IMHO the noise from the trains (they blow their horns when entering the station) is very annoying, and harder to ignore/get used to since it's discrete, unlike continuous white noise from highways. Also, given the overall large area served by a single Caltrain station, parking lots next to them is arguably better and more egalitarian since people can drive in, and take the train more easily. The Park N ride concept is also not just a Bay Area thing, I believe it's quite successful in New Jersey and New York for people commuting to Manhattan to work. I think you might be comparing to the subway systems in places like Manhattan or Barcelona or Paris, but the population and station density of those places is very different.

Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago
Park and rides are actually less egalitarian and worse for the system. An apartment close by is much more likely to generate ridership. Walking is the cheapest form of transportation available, so no need to own vehicles that cost thousands off dollars to reach the station. Also, increasing the supply of housing in general means more access. I'd be willing to bet that housing would allow more people per square foot to ride than a parking garage. Cars take up huge amounts of space. Truly tremendous amounts. Move people and goods, not cars.
- closeparen 10y ago
  Walking is great, but it is staggeringly expensive to live close to useful things, and similarly expensive in time costs to go from a 60mph freeway to a 4mph brisk walk. I don't disagree that cars take up a lot of space, but from my recent assessment when finding a place to live in the Bay Area, car-centric lifestyle is really a lot cheaper unless you're prepared to make enormous sacrifices in what you accept in terms of living space. >I'd be willing to bet that housing would allow more people per square foot to ride than a parking garage A parking lot requires about 300sqft per car. A stacker system should cut that roughly in half, but to be generous with the fixed costs let's say 200sqft. Every person we serve with a modest 600sqft 1-bedroom within walking distance is 2 people who can't get to the train effectively at all. Drivers can live arbitrarily far away, at whatever cost:space:time tradeoff makes sense for them, and still take the train. If all 3 drivers decide they'd like to sell their cars and walk, the price on apartments within walking distance must rise until 2 of them back off. Bulldozing the parking delivers an awesome lifestyle for the one guy who can afford the housing that replaces it, but at great expense to him and greater expense to the other 2 guys, who now can't get to the train effectively at all. This is why park-n-ride is egalitarian and hip urban development is elitist. Even though you're adding housing, you're increasing the cost to be able to get to the station easily (rent > transportation costs by a long shot) and decreasing the number of people who can do it (unless you're suggesting we live in car-sized apartments). If we want to demolish the walking-distance parking, we need to replace it with something approximately as good for as many people at approximately the same cost. Apartments are better, but they fail the other two tests. Self-driving Uber, bike racks, motorcycle/scooter spaces, all of the above, whatever.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    I live 1.2 miles from a Caltrain station. The office where I work is 1.1 miles from a Caltrain station. On days when it's raining or I'm feeling too tired to walk, I can Lyft to the station or ride a commute.org shuttle that gets to Caltrain and has a pickup/dropoff spot a block from my apartment. Which is a good thing, because the parking lot at the Caltrain station is completely full by the time I wake up (and shifting my schedule 2-3 hours earlier would take away my ability to actually work with the people I work with).
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - closeparen 10y ago
      For context, the average car commute in a sprawling metro is 25 minutes total. Assuming your walking speed is near average, you spend more than 45 minutes just on the first and last miles each way. That's brutal and insane. We should not have to live this way.
      - ubernostrum 10y ago
        On the other hand, I just got back from Amsterdam, where I can get from pretty much anywhere in the city to anywhere else in the city, without a car, in that 25-minute time period. Transit doesn't have to be bad.
- scharfstevenm 10y ago
  The problem with housing and transit is that people change jobs, and companies change locations, so often that it's impractical to move every time a job location changes (and for couples, there are two people to deal with). When I have a contract in SF, I use Caltrain. I have a gig in Fremont now, and I drive. I tried combining a bicycle ride with VTA light rail, and it was really terrible, taking two hours, rather than a 25-30 minute drive. A large industrial area in southern Fremont, with no VTA bus from the light rail station on Tasman, and no A/C transit bus from BART. Maybe when the BART extension opens they'll add a bus from the station over to the industrial park area.
scharfstevenm 10y ago
Personally, I ride a bicycle to Sunnyvale station from Cupertino then take the bicycle on the train, and the "last five mile" problem is solved. Except that the bicycle capacity on Caltrain isn't enough, and sometimes all the bicycle spaces are filled in San Jose (on the express and Baby Bullet) so now I ride a folding bicycle to guarantee access. Obviously not everyone can bicycle to the train, and it's more of a hassle than Park & Ride, but it also saves money, and often time, on each end. In SF, once the new Muni line opens that will make the SF end of Caltrain more accessible to more people. I think that I'm the only candidate for Cupertino City Council that actually ever uses transit! And I am very much opposed to Measure B, which is mainly money for more roads, which won't solve the congestion problem.

by tsycho 10y ago

Zach_the_Lizard 10y ago

Park and rides are actually less egalitarian and worse for the system. An apartment close by is much more likely to generate ridership. Walking is the cheapest form of transportation available, so no need to own vehicles that cost thousands off dollars to reach the station. Also, increasing the supply of housing in general means more access. I'd be willing to bet that housing would allow more people per square foot to ride than a parking garage. Cars take up huge amounts of space. Truly tremendous amounts. Move people and goods, not cars.

closeparen 10y ago
Walking is great, but it is staggeringly expensive to live close to useful things, and similarly expensive in time costs to go from a 60mph freeway to a 4mph brisk walk. I don't disagree that cars take up a lot of space, but from my recent assessment when finding a place to live in the Bay Area, car-centric lifestyle is really a lot cheaper unless you're prepared to make enormous sacrifices in what you accept in terms of living space. >I'd be willing to bet that housing would allow more people per square foot to ride than a parking garage A parking lot requires about 300sqft per car. A stacker system should cut that roughly in half, but to be generous with the fixed costs let's say 200sqft. Every person we serve with a modest 600sqft 1-bedroom within walking distance is 2 people who can't get to the train effectively at all. Drivers can live arbitrarily far away, at whatever cost:space:time tradeoff makes sense for them, and still take the train. If all 3 drivers decide they'd like to sell their cars and walk, the price on apartments within walking distance must rise until 2 of them back off. Bulldozing the parking delivers an awesome lifestyle for the one guy who can afford the housing that replaces it, but at great expense to him and greater expense to the other 2 guys, who now can't get to the train effectively at all. This is why park-n-ride is egalitarian and hip urban development is elitist. Even though you're adding housing, you're increasing the cost to be able to get to the station easily (rent > transportation costs by a long shot) and decreasing the number of people who can do it (unless you're suggesting we live in car-sized apartments). If we want to demolish the walking-distance parking, we need to replace it with something approximately as good for as many people at approximately the same cost. Apartments are better, but they fail the other two tests. Self-driving Uber, bike racks, motorcycle/scooter spaces, all of the above, whatever.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  I live 1.2 miles from a Caltrain station. The office where I work is 1.1 miles from a Caltrain station. On days when it's raining or I'm feeling too tired to walk, I can Lyft to the station or ride a commute.org shuttle that gets to Caltrain and has a pickup/dropoff spot a block from my apartment. Which is a good thing, because the parking lot at the Caltrain station is completely full by the time I wake up (and shifting my schedule 2-3 hours earlier would take away my ability to actually work with the people I work with).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - closeparen 10y ago
    For context, the average car commute in a sprawling metro is 25 minutes total. Assuming your walking speed is near average, you spend more than 45 minutes just on the first and last miles each way. That's brutal and insane. We should not have to live this way.
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      On the other hand, I just got back from Amsterdam, where I can get from pretty much anywhere in the city to anywhere else in the city, without a car, in that 25-minute time period. Transit doesn't have to be bad.
scharfstevenm 10y ago
The problem with housing and transit is that people change jobs, and companies change locations, so often that it's impractical to move every time a job location changes (and for couples, there are two people to deal with). When I have a contract in SF, I use Caltrain. I have a gig in Fremont now, and I drive. I tried combining a bicycle ride with VTA light rail, and it was really terrible, taking two hours, rather than a 25-30 minute drive. A large industrial area in southern Fremont, with no VTA bus from the light rail station on Tasman, and no A/C transit bus from BART. Maybe when the BART extension opens they'll add a bus from the station over to the industrial park area.

scharfstevenm 10y ago

Personally, I ride a bicycle to Sunnyvale station from Cupertino then take the bicycle on the train, and the "last five mile" problem is solved. Except that the bicycle capacity on Caltrain isn't enough, and sometimes all the bicycle spaces are filled in San Jose (on the express and Baby Bullet) so now I ride a folding bicycle to guarantee access. Obviously not everyone can bicycle to the train, and it's more of a hassle than Park & Ride, but it also saves money, and often time, on each end. In SF, once the new Muni line opens that will make the SF end of Caltrain more accessible to more people. I think that I'm the only candidate for Cupertino City Council that actually ever uses transit! And I am very much opposed to Measure B, which is mainly money for more roads, which won't solve the congestion problem.